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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27914092">Notes from the Song</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldleaf1066/pseuds/goldleaf1066'>goldleaf1066</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Drabbles, Gra/Goh, Mild Smut, Other, References to Canon Death, Romance, Show Spoilers, Softness, explicit chapters will have a warning in the title, prompt-fills, tags will be added as we go along</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:48:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,848</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27914092</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldleaf1066/pseuds/goldleaf1066</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>My collection of prompt-fills from write-in sessions over the past few months; mostly Gra/Goh romance and angst (of course it is, it's me!) with more characters popping up here and there.</p><p>Most are SFW, some are definitely not - warnings will be posted for individual chapters.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>skekGra/urGoh (Dark Crystal), urSu/urVa (Dark Crystal)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Find Yourself (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Everything has legs in the Circle of the Suns. Bowls, paintbrushes, his washcloth, that stick he likes to scratch the spot between his shoulder-blades with that his other arms can’t reach. All of it, wandering around when he’s not looking and hiding from him when he needs it most. </p><p>He finds the missing puppet in their loft. He finds urGoh there too, beneath the blankets, face wreathed in ghostly whorls of hookah smoke. In one hand he holds himself-in-miniature.</p><p>“You found me,” he says. It’s not clear if he’s dressed.</p><p>SkekGra steps closer, scowl dissipating. UrGoh’s tail curls around his ankle.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'd love to know what you think of these; short-form writing is so much fun and a challenge at the same time!</p><p>(For anyone from the server: I forgot half the actual prompt titles, don't come for me haha!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Last Sight (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’ll walk down with urGoh and say farewell with their feet on the scalding desert. Rush back up to breathlessly watch him cross the dunes toward the caravan.</p><p>From above he’s but a small shape swaying side-to-side in a slow lollop, tail dragged behind and leaving a groove in the sand, soon swallowed as it shifts in the wind. </p><p>He watches until the sun burns his eyes and the horizon swallows him up. It will be several days until his return, until skekGra’s heart calms its gallop, until he can breathe and blink and hold those hands in his again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'd love to know what you think of these; short-form writing is so much fun and a challenge at the same time!</p><p>(For anyone from the server: I forgot half the actual prompt titles, don't come for me haha!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Acceptance (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: mention of blood.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>SkekGra thinks of his hands. So used as he was to seeing them awash in blood that the red of his gloves in the corner of his eye still gives him pause, catches him mid-sentence and mid-gesticulation, causes him to wonder if urGoh feels his heart skip a beat, too. But he can’t see them just now buried as they are in urGoh’s hair, clasping and woven into him as his Mystic’s arms bring him into their orbit, holding him close as his long neck arcs heavily over his shoulder.</p><p>Before urGoh, no-one had ever held him, or said kind words to him and meant them in that riddlesome, but honest way. There is no pretence, no doublespeak. Just urGoh and his gaze and his embrace that skekGra after so long is finally learning he can yearn for, seek out, sink into without guilt. When urGoh first opened his arms to him he wanted to run; he did not deserve tenderness after the terrible acts his hands had wrought.</p><p>But this is not one of those acts. Slowly he is coming to acknowledge this, and urGoh is nothing if not a patient creature, whispering endlessly gentle things in his ear.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'd love to know what you think of these; short-form writing is so much fun and a challenge at the same time!</p><p>(For anyone from the server: I forgot half the actual prompt titles, don't come for me haha!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Inevitable (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Were we inevitable?”</p><p>The suns have long set but the air is still warm, or perhaps it’s just the heat of the loft and what they have been doing beneath the hanging gauzes and the inconstant light of the lanterns. There are strange colours shifting over their skin, patterns that split and spiral across them like wildfire made tame.</p><p>UrGoh lifts his head, his eyes in shadow, but skekGra can feel them on him as surely as he feels dry palms mapping him, feels the softness of his hair as he moves to rub their heads together.</p><p>“I hope so.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'd love to know what you think of these; short-form writing is so much fun and a challenge at the same time!</p><p>(For anyone from the server: I forgot half the actual prompt titles, don't come for me haha!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Full Circle (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’s never seen the sky like this before. UrGoh, never first to arrive anywhere, shuffles to a halt beside him and half-stands, hind-hands on knees, squinting.</p><p>“I didn’t realise how beautiful it would be.”</p><p>SkekGra exhales at the novelty of being eye-to-eye with urGoh and takes one of his hands in his.</p><p>“What do you think will happen to us?”</p><p>The three suns are almost one. The light washes across them both, paints them in colours thrilling and strange. SkekGra moves closer; they are embracing, cheek to cheek, noses pointed skywards.</p><p>“My only hope is that Thra keeps us together.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'd love to know what you think of these; short-form writing is so much fun and a challenge at the same time!</p><p>(For anyone from the server: I forgot half the actual prompt titles, don't come for me haha!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Open Your Eyes (urSu)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There are shapes in the dust between his toes. Circles and spirals drawn with a careful finger. </p><p>Song in the air, the distant smell of cooking. Life goes on here, as it ever has, as it ever will.</p><p>No. They cannot remain unmalleable. Inactive. Unwilling. Inward. Time is running out, as time has run out for the gelfling. </p><p>UrSu tightens his grip of his staff, looks down once more at the pictures in the sand: diagrams and portents charted upon Thra. In them, the future, and the past. The end, and the beginning.</p><p>He must be careful, word it delicately. The pain of realisation, of knowing they have been wrong may do more harm than anything, but it must be done. They must act, before the suns conspire to spell out their fate.</p><p>He swipes his palm through the etchings, ending their magic. They must look elsewhere for the answers.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>150 words on the nose :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Take It Or Leave It (urGoh, Aughra)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It grabs the glow of the suns and throws it back in his eyes; dazzling, too bright, and cold to the touch urGoh discovers when he takes it into his long-fingered grasp. </p>
<p>“Is this…” he begins, and the rest is forgotten, lost in endless facets.</p>
<p>“Yes, yes! Do you think I would bring you any old lump of rock?” She looks around, sniffs, shakes her head and sits after no small amount of grumbling. “Where is your louder half? The foolish questions normally come from his direction.”</p>
<p>“What do we do with it?” It’s too big a responsibility to not at least ask. Too big a question too, but urGoh gets it out in one attempt.</p>
<p>Aughra throws up her hands. “You had a vision, yes? Unity?” She thrusts a finger at the object, fixing the Mystic with her one-eyed stare. “Up to you now; opportunity will present itself in time, indeed.”</p>
<p>UrGoh lifts the shard up again, turning it in the light. </p>
<p>“Not just you two who are broken.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>170 words this time - whenever I actually keep to a word limit it's an event, ha.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Oblivion (urVa)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There is a note hanging in the air. </p>
<p>It thrums against his throat; his raised palms know and cradle it like an old friend at the last goodbye. It’s a harmony he has been chasing for centuries. </p>
<p>Is he cruel to invite the embrace of nothingness to subsume them both? Is it wasteful? Is it necessary? Will it welcome them?</p>
<p>If there is existence after this he is prepared for the scolding. If not, then he accepts that infinite void - no memory, no experience - all the same. </p>
<p>The sky vibrates with song when he steps out into it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>100 words :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Final Sacrifice (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>UrGoh was sleeping, and it took several callings of his name and a shake of the shoulder before he uncurled and swung his head up to meet skekGra’s eye with his own, half-open ones.</p><p>The grogginess soon evaporates. “Are you sure?” UrGoh glances glacially around their loft, as if looking for an alternative. He turns back, empty-handed. “It’s all I have left.”</p><p>“I know,” SkekGra crouches, meeting his head with his own and rubbing their noses together. “You know why we need to let go of it.”</p><p>UrGoh doesn’t look convinced but he lumbers to his feet anyway, shuffling over to the shelf where he keeps various boxes and jars and the little things that are just his. He opens a lid, takes one last sniff, then tips the contents into skekGra’s waiting palms. Mystic pipe-weed is hard to come by, even harder now, for them, but the Dousan leap over themselves to trade exotic and rare things for it, and they need those too.</p><p>SkekGra looks dubiously at the precarious pile of leaves in his hands as the chimes hanging above them jangle in the desert breeze.</p><p>“They’re not taking my jar too,” urGoh says grumpily.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. The Next Best Thing (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sometimes on the odd unum urGoh is gone overnight, trekking to a more distant trading post so as not to appear at the same ones too often. SkekGra looks forward to it and makes sure to declare it repeatedly: peace from interminable sentences and tripping over that tail and a clear head unfogged by pipesmoke.</p>
<p>His urRu apologises for each upcoming absence, laying a hand on skekGra’s shoulder as if to reassure him he will return in due course. And skekGra shakes him off, huffs and puffs and tells him to hurry up and go if he’s going and don’t hurry back without the good gourds this time, shard’s sake.</p>
<p>When the three brothers set it’s quieter without the pauses in urGoh’s sentences, and colder, and skekGra finds himself in the loft putting out the lanterns and looking around for someone who isn’t there, though he’d never admit it.</p>
<p>They each have their own sleeping space; two piles of blankets in two heaps on the floor. UrGoh’s are soft and heavy, embroidered, and smell like him; the distant spice of incense and a comforting warmth. SkekGra slips beneath them, drawing them around himself, and wishes it were more than this.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Guiding Bolt (skekGra, urGoh, urVa)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He watched them and their stagger, the castle diminishing behind. Their fumble into the forest, their rest, their recovery. Their onward shamble leant against one another. Their fitful sleep curled together beside no laughing fire.</p>
<p>He guesses from the presence of the Hunter following in the trees above him that any overt help he offers would be an error. So, he follows and waits and when they slump together upon the fork in the road, one path leading north to the snow, the other into the endless, subsuming sands, he lets fly just one arrow to mark the wiser choice.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. No Matter What (skekGra/urGoh, NSFW)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Set the night before skekGra leaves to fight with the Resistance in one of my ten billion AUs.</p><p>Warning: Contains mild smut between two old gay alien nerds.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Of all the things likely to happen on this night, he did not expect urGoh to cry.</p><p>It was always going to be bittersweet, impossible to put completely from their minds what the sunsrise would bring. No harm in the attempt, in taking their time to commit anew to memory each sharp angle and soft curve on each other’s bodies with fingertips, noses and tongues. A memory to take with them on their separate paths.</p><p>And there they were, big tears that brimmed against his eyelashes and spilled over his cheeks like dual rivers in miniature. He didn’t sob, not audibly. Just one great hitch of his chest against skekGra’s that made him take note, look up and feel his own stomach lurch as if he were perched on the precipice outside their door and about to take the plunge.</p><p>He supposes that’s true, in a way.</p><p>“Please,” he says, tries to say, “please don’t.” Not very comforting, but he has never had to comfort urGoh, and urGoh has never needed comfort. Or perhaps, skekGra realises, terrified, he always had, and he never noticed, not in all those hundreds of trine together. Too wrapped up in himself to notice, but then, he chides inwardly, urGoh is himself, and he has been wrapped up in him too. He would have noticed, surely. Surely?</p><p>“I don’t mean to,” urGoh says. In his voice there rattles a thousand broken promises, all of them variations on a theme; <i>we will be together forever. I love you, I love you.</i> Promises skekGra remembers and hates himself for. He didn’t mean to break them.</p><p>
  <i>I will never leave you.</i>
</p><p>“Listen,” he says, cradling urGoh’s face in his upturned palms. “Listen,” he says, running the pads of his thumbs over the velvet of urGoh’s ears through his hair. “Listen to me.”</p><p>UrGoh is listening, he knows. He closes his eyes, but he is listening. He pulls skekGra closer with two hands, wrapping arms around him. The fingers of a third hand push between their legs. He is listening as he holds his face against skekGra’s throat, listening as he breathes hotly into the scoop of his collarbones, as he guides skekGra into him, as he makes that little sound in his throat again, the one skekGra always ascribed to the sympathetic stretch he too now feels below. UrGoh is listening to him, his breathing, his heartbeat, the sound of his skin against the sheets and against urGoh’s. Listening, and holding and claiming him so very slowly and gently, as if by moving languidly they might draw out out the seconds between now and the inevitable, the unwanted but necessary. The moment when they will be together no more.</p><p>UrGoh looks up at him when he doesn’t speak. His eyes are still damp, catching the lantern light which dances and flickers over his face, casting strange shadows and shimmering haloes all around him. They are no longer young, their flesh sagging and blemished and their bodies aching with the storms that throw themselves against their home as ceaselessly as they have thrown themselves against each other time and again. Still, skekGra thinks, urGoh grows more beautiful every day, and has never been more arresting than in this moment. He feels a sob of his own swell in his chest knowing there will soon be a gap in his memory of the days to come of how urGoh might look to him, or at him.</p><p>They have spent a life together and still it wasn’t enough time.  </p><p>He doesn’t know what to say.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Mirror Image (skekGra/ urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the beginning of their seclusion he found himself looking for physical similarities. They seemed to him, in those days, so wildly different in character and temperament that he needed proof of their once being knitted so closely together as to know not who claimed which arm or took what breath.</p>
<p>(Proof further than the scattered images he sees in slumber, like shards of glass reflecting a different truth with each mote of light that hits them.)</p>
<p>He looked to the arc of a brow, the slope of a nose, the length of feet and the span of arms and found within them the ghosts of familiarity, but not much more. He couldn’t help but feel his heart sink when he looked at that face and didn’t see, in that instant, his own looking back at him in those deep set-eyes, in the whorls unravelling across deep, dark skin.</p>
<p>It crept in on quiet feet, slow as the urRu that he had pledged his future days to. They would say the same thing at the same time, reach to pluck the same berry from the vine and knock heads under a table retrieving some fallen tool. Then, in the night, the words would flow between them as ceaselessly as the smoke from the pipe. Fears, confessions, promises. Hands seeking hands seeking hands. </p>
<p>He now only needs to look at that face, and know they share the same thought, the same conviction, the same heart. </p>
<p>At long last, he sees himself.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. We're Running Out of Time (skekGra, urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>What if the gelfling never found Lore's message?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>How many hundreds of trine has it been now? Three hundred, four? They’ve worked so hard, for so long, and so longingly have looked out from their doorway into the vast and shifting ocean of sand, and still no-one has come.</p><p>UrGoh is sleeping when skekGra enters the loft. He slumbers more now, is slower, muddled in his words but no less gentle. SkekGra looks at his hand as he reaches to stroke his whitened hair. How his fingers shake, can no longer paint the details on worn-out puppets.</p><p>UrGoh sighs in his dream. SkekGra drifts with him. </p><p>
  <i>Please, hurry.</i>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Home Improvements (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The prompt for this one was originally 'hearts and minds' but I went off on my own tangent because I couldn't think of anything that fit it :P</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“There,” says urGoh.</p>
<p>“What am I looking at?” </p>
<p>“I thought,” urGoh says, “we could make our mark.”</p>
<p>SkekGra looks around them, at their belongings scattered and piled in every corner of their new home. Their cookfire with sooty footprints smeared in maddening circles around it. Their sleeping-space, a nonsense of blankets and cushions in a crevice to the rear.</p>
<p>“Haven’t we already made our mark? This place is a mess.”</p>
<p>“No, look. Look.” UrGoh pulls his attention back to the wall with a tug at his hems. The rock face looms over them, rising skyward and tilting back over them to form the conical roof of their dwelling. On it, a few inches from urGoh’s nose, is a long, three-fingered outline of a hand daubed in white.</p>
<p>When he glances at urGoh’s hands, they are covered in paint.</p>
<p>“I’m not decorating this entire wall with you.”</p>
<p>UrGoh’s sigh is like the shifting of the great dunes outside. Through a gap in the stones above, a slice of sunlit loops itself around his topknot.</p>
<p>“You don’t have to,” he says, taking skekGra’s hands in his own and pressing them against the wall. With a hind-hand he paints around them, then around his. When they both move back skekGra cocks his head at their effort. His two prints surrounded by urGoh’s larger four.</p>
<p>“As long as you’re with me.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Beneath the Vines (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The prompt for this one was 'gentle'.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He drops his words on the floor, then searches for them, his sentence eroding halfway and left quivering amongst the vines. SkekGra waits for urGoh to finish nosing around his feet and along the shelves and to find what he is looking for, roll it around on his tongue and curve his long neck at him with two hands on knees and two more lifted to spell it out in the air. He doesn’t even have to say it, whatever it was, because skekGra can see it in the downward tilt of his back, and the flecks of silver on his upper lip, and the great gentleness of him there, paused mid-step with greenery crowning him. He knows it as truly as he knows that deep, homely scent of urRu coiling in his nostrils: his eyes will never tire of his shape; his voice, cracking and overused, will never fall short of vows binding them more tightly into each other’s orbit. Right there, in the yawning expanse between thought and speech, he knows his heart can never be too full of him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>My illustration for this drabble can be found on my Tumblr, <a href="https://mystics-and-chill.tumblr.com/post/639317310192123904/he-drops-his-words-on-the-floor-then-searches-for">mystics-and-chill</a> :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Wholeness (skekGra, urGoh, urVa)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s a long way down. </p><p>He can’t help himself; he has to see. Shuffle to the edge and peer over, heavy tail flat against the rock as counterbalance, fingers of all hands curled around any cranny in the stone possible lest he go over too if too strong a breeze catches in his hair, stokes his vertigo, sends him flailing.</p><p>It’s a very long way down.</p><p>“Why do you look?” skekGra asks him, later, once he is safely indoors, in their loft, under the blankets, wrapped around skekGra. </p><p>“I had to know… what it felt like.” He closes his eyes, sees the drop again, feels his heart plummet anew. “To be so lost from oneself.”</p><p>Alarm. “You wouldn’t…”</p><p>“Never.” UrGoh presses his long face against the softness of skekGra’s throat. He can feel the thrum of his heart; it grounds him. “But it hurts even more to know he didn’t have this to pull him back.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Boiling Point (skekGra/urGoh, mildly NSFW)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Another little 100 word-er :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No matter how hard he tries, how patient, understanding, how high he counts in his head, some days skekGra reaches his limit.</p>
<p>So slow, so infuriatingly, indescribably slow. In speech, in pace, in thought.</p>
<p>He does it deliberately, he must.</p>
<p>He could scream, but he doesn’t.</p>
<p>In the night, when winds whisper and stars whirl, skekGra counts to infinite numbers again. He is so slow, so infuriatingly, indescribably slow. In touch, in movement, in exploration of skekGra’s body. His fingers’ journey is so measured, his tongue so precise.</p>
<p>He does it deliberately, he must.</p>
<p>He could scream. </p>
<p>But he doesn’t.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Cursed (skekMal, urVa)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>100 words again - sometimes I actually stick to the word limit for these things, but it's not often :D</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Oh, it would be him, here, now.  Ever lumbering into choice moments to sweep that heavy-lidded gaze over him and his quarry, but mostly over him, always him.</p>
<p>Why is he surprised? His scent coiled in his nostrils long before his voice called out to him. Perhaps it has never ceased coiling, perhaps he has never let go. The memory of a day long since dust where they exchanged something sweeter than barbed words he keeps well-shrouded, but he keeps it.</p>
<p>The Archer’s name is anathema to him, yet still falls from skekMal’s tongue as the third arrow takes flight.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. First Step (urVa)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Well, get a move on! You Mystics are not known for your swift speed!”</p><p>The bell of Aughra’s words rings in his head, growing more distant with each repetition as she herself disappears into the forest without looking back. You speak true, he thinks, and while this in moments lost in trine past has caused him regret at arriving not soon enough at some pivotal instance, he feels an empty gladness now at the lack of urgency with which his fate will plod on sure, steady feet toward him.</p><p>He points his long head desertward and begins his last journey.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Another little 100-worder. One day I'll write about urVa and not have it be angsty but it is not this day.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Celebration (SkekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You can come outside now.”</p>
<p>UrGoh lifts his head, cocking it before getting to his feet and shuffling toward and through the curtains that serve as the door to their home.</p>
<p>SkekGra’s voice had sounded… nervous? Curious from one who never sounded unsure about anything, even when proven wrong.</p>
<p>Curiouser still was what awaited him on the precipice. Lit candles in the rock lending a soft glow in the fading light. Incense burning delicately from somewhere above, bowls of sweet honey and his favourite fruit in a semi-circle on a rug hauled from their loft. His pipe too, though he isn’t sure how he managed to miss its absence.</p>
<p>“What is this?” he asks, coming to a halt in the middle of everything, tail-tip carefully held out of any open flame. SkekGra approaches him, reaching out his hands.</p>
<p>“It’s been one whole trine since we came here. I thought we might commemorate it.”</p>
<p>“We are rather long-lived,” urGoh ponders, taking it all in. “There will be many such commemorations…” he looks up and sees the light in skekGra’s eyes, “… if you intend on making this a tradition.”</p>
<p>“I do.”</p>
<p>UrGoh takes his hands, drawing him close.</p>
<p>“I do, too.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>200 words! I rarely keep to the word limits on these so feel I have to announce it when I do, haha.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Forbidden Attraction (urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It wasn't as if it was absolutely sacrosanct, it just... never came up. Fraternising was so unthinkable it was never thought of to forbid. Companionship? Impossible for two groups of entities so diametrically opposed in all outlook and bearing.</p><p>What about something deeper than friendship, then? UrGoh couldn't be sure of the urRu doctrine on that. And truly, was there <i>something</i>? He, creature of one thousand miles trod, of endless stories told and faces met, knew in himself he was still mostly ignorant to that particular room inside him, and what treasures it could contain if only he had the key.</p><p>He finds himself wandering in smaller circles, returning to the same paths, the same spots to spend the night. It's not that he expects to cross paths again with anyone in particular, but if he did it wouldn't be entirely unlooked for, or make his heart skip any less.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Talisman (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What's... this?"</p><p>"Nothing."</p><p>He'd found it on the floor of the loft amongst the blankets one day. Fallen and forgotten, he assumed, from some greying lock of hair. </p><p>"It's not... nothing. I recognise-"</p><p>"Go to sleep."</p><p>He'd held it his palm: a little bead no larger than his thumbnail with a whorl carved into it. He didn't know if it had been some cast-off from one of their projects that urGoh has repurposed on a whim, or some small token he'd carried, braided into his mane, all the way from the arms of his fellow urRu.</p><p>"Let me... see." </p><p>He'd meant to give it back, but had grown so used to the feel of it, barely there, hung from a thread around his neck and bumping against his chest beneath his robes as he walked, that he'd become rather adverse to parting from it. On nights made colder by the lack of urGoh beside him, he'd roll it between thumb and forefinger and think of him.</p><p>Whatever magic the bead may have possessed is in danger: skekGra felt, however ridiculously, that in its surreptitiousness lay its power, and now urGoh was nosing around at his collar and drawing out the pendant on a long finger to squint at it in the lantern light.</p><p>"Don't start,' skekGra says, cheeks heating. Far be it for even the Heretic to be superstitious, or worse, sentimental.</p><p>"I wouldn't... dare," urGoh says, tucking the bead back where he found it. It's impossible but skekGra could swear he feels a spark leap from it, tingling against his skin. UrGoh lays his head back on the pillow and wraps his arms around him. His expression is hard to discern in the shadows, but skekGra thinks he sees only wonder.</p><p>"I never know where to start... with you."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Running On Empty (skekSo)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Totally not updating this on a Monday by mistake, nope. (Also just one new drabble this week, sorry!)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No one has noticed.</p><p>No one is allowed to notice. Podlings, naturally, hiding dustpan and brush behind their backs as they edge into the room once the bed is vacated, don’t count. </p><p>The Ornamentalist, tasked with altering and altering again pleats and tassels and drapery to bulk out the hollows and smooth over the ramparts of his spine, says, for once, nothing.</p><p>(If silks are sullied with desiccation there is an averted eye and the snap of flapped fabrics over the balcony afterwards, well out of sight and kept from the gossip-gleaners behind a tightly-sewn jaw and insistence of ignorance on any topic lest it wend its wicked way toward the throne.)</p><p>It’s not as if anything has changed, his grip on his sceptre still like iron, his eye, when it hits you, makes you wish it hasn’t.</p><p>And perhaps it hasn’t. Perhaps, it is milkier than the last time you were peered at, perhaps unseeing or choosing not to see when passing a polished surface or when gazing down into wine.</p><p>The face that looks back is not his own.</p><p>Does he not stride with purpose still? Or do the others slow so as not to outpace him?</p><p>When the Crystal sings to them in his ears peals a jangle of sound, a shrill keening voice that says endlessly and always, you are dust. </p><p>But he can’t be dust when he is still breathing. Even when the breath comes with effort. When waking in the minuscule hours of night night it is like clawing through clay, lungs papery and empty, gasps rising into and nestling amongst the eaves. </p><p>The shadows know, but they cannot speak.</p><p>Deep down, in some small, blackened corner, he knows it too. </p><p>He is finite, but he is not finished, not yet.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Look at me not writing GraGoh for once! More where that came from (aka new characters...) to come!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Compromise Between Enemies (skekGra, urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What are you doing? Why are you stopping?” The acoustics of the room carry his squawking up into the great leaning stones that roof their new home, placed there by some unknown hand many countless trine before their feet touched the floor beneath them.</p>
<p>Their luggage meets the floor too, with a soft thump. Then urGoh himself, sitting heavily beside their belongings, clutching his staff in both fore-hands. His gaze says nothing of the reason for his particular lassitude in this moment, and his tongue too slow to vocalise it.</p>
<p>SkekGra huffs, feathers ruffled. He gestures to the space they have entered; large enough for two to live in, but empty, dusty, sand-filled and too cold when the night comes to promise much comfort. “We have to unpack; you can’t just stop now.”</p>
<p>“Skek-”</p>
<p>“-least you could do is help me clear some of this sand away- “</p>
<p>“-Gra…”</p>
<p>“-Thra knows I’ve done my part pushing you up half of those steps to get here-“</p>
<p>“<b>Heretic</b>.”</p>
<p>SkekGra’s tirade ceases, his shoulders relax from their hunching, his fists unfurl and his mouth, at last, closes. UrGoh looks up at him, and skekGra realises the problem, reads it in the proximity of urGoh’s knees to the ground and the bone-weariness etched into the swirls on his face. They have been walking into their exile for days, and it would seem even the Wanderer has his limits. </p>
<p>“Please,” urGoh entreats, pointing his nose toward one of their bags, in which skekGra, after sheepishly bending to open it, finds a blanket.</p>
<p>He supposes, sitting up against the wall shortly afterwards with the Wanderer’s snoring head in his lap and the blanket draped over them both, they have the rest of their lives to make it a home.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Progress (skekGra, urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>UrGoh’s voice reverberates through their home, rising into the eaves and making the very rock vibrate with whatever Mystic magic he’s weaving into the note. Vibrating too are the stones piled in front of him, shivering and shuddering and completely failing to coalesce into anything other than a heap on the floor.</p>
<p>He stops singing, and frowns.</p>
<p>“It’s an improvement from before you did all of… those,” skekGra offers, waving his hand in a circular motion indicating the swirling grooves urGoh has spent many unum slowly chiselling into the rock. Prior to their carving, the stones had not moved at all, no matter the song.</p>
<p>“I suppose…” UrGoh says, swinging his frown around to land on skekGra. “…you are right.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>120 words of... Lore lore XD</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Immortal Love (skekGra/urGoh, implied NSFW)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No moons look down on him when he sinks into the soft grasses. </p>
<p>His thoughts, on the other hand, are ablaze with ideas burning white-hot with the memory-that’s-not of a time when he wasn’t himself, but himself unhalved.</p>
<p>Tell me about us, he asks more and more, about when we were I, when we were light. Their meetings are illicit, cloaked by nightfall and watched over only by stars in clear skies, and the dim bellies of low-hanging clouds on less clement evenings. UrGoh doesn’t really remember, not any more than he, about whatever and whoever GraGoh was, or what it was like to be them. But he can spin a tale, inch by inch, drawing skekGra closer to him with every word, painting him a picture of wholeness so necessary that he would do anything to un-rend them, to re-glue their torn edges together and know what it is like to look out of both sets of eyes at once.</p>
<p>No moons mark their latest simulacrum of unity, inch by inch in the soft grasses, but the sundered parts of a being once radiant, now forgotten, will remember this if nothing else.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>One of these days I'm gonna post the same drabble twice by mistake and won't that be quite the pickle :D</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0028"><h2>28. Smooth (urSan, NSFW)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Some Swimmer me-time for your consideration.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s a rhythm to it, she finds, that is best matched with the lapping of the river against the rock. </p>
<p>When she slides beneath the surface, she is as the water-weeds, long and flowing and ploughing through the depths as if born to it. </p>
<p>She wasn’t born, not quite like that, but it is like a parent, the water, unravelling and calming and concealing, and turning her from staggering gangle-creature shuffling over arm and leg and arm and tail amongst the reeds, hair tying itself to root and twig, into quicksilver. One turn of her head and her path is decided. A flick of wrists, the thrust of palms against pebbles and the thrash of tail sends her onwards without some much as a ripple revealing her.</p>
<p>But, one cannot stay submerged forever. The suns, she finds, are most pleasant (at noon, in the summer) when they draw their rayed-hands across her skin, cradling her jaw and drawing slow circles over her breasts as she flattens herself on the bank and matches the movement of her fingers between her legs to the caress of the water’s-edge against her toes.</p>
<p>She could look down, see the midday light framed between her bent knees, but she doesn’t. Her head rests on the damp velvet of shore-sand, her tail tip drifting in the shallows, her free hands meandering across the soft surfaces of her body. Her breath, harder and harder to catch, as if going under. When it comes, when she does, she will cry out only then for a lungful of sky, before pulling the blanket of the river over her shoulders again and disappearing from view.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0029"><h2>29. Magic (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s when the suns begin to dip and the shadows stretch like sap from peeled-off bark across the room and beneath their eyes, cloaking them in a sheen of dusk, motes spiralling and dancing between them. When the lanterns are lit and swing causally in ever diminishing arcs after the hand that steadied them departs, searching for the next one. It’s in the twilight that shifts through coloured glass, from blue to gold to red and all colours named and unnamed between. The scent of spice, of fire, of cloying desert air, dry and close all at once. The subtle and satisfying scrape of sand beneath the feet, and the shifting of it in the folds of clothes and the blinking of it from creasing eyes. A laugh in the dust and a touch; wrapped in arms upon arms and being held as if something coveted, precious, as if letting go would break a heart, and he can almost call this unbelievable truth his.</p><p><i>You deserve this</i>, comes a voice, <i>you deserve all of this</i>. Words that drift through smoke, slow and soft and wriggling into his ear. They tickle him; he squirms with delight. The arms pull him closer. He never wants the spell to break.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>(Totally not updating this a day late again or anything.)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0030"><h2>30. Moan (urVa/urSu, NSFW)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’s quiet, always, deep in thought or shy or not wishing to speak out of turn even though all who surround him love him and are so loved in return that none would ever find fault in an interruption. </p><p>UrVa, who may love him more than most, insofar as an urRu can love another in that painful, more terribly unfortunate way, tries to coach him. </p><p>It’s not even for his own amusement, or to know he <i>can</i> utter such scandalous notes. As a mystic of such a different colour he doesn’t mind wishing, selfishly, to hear his name fall from that tongue in waves, undulating and straining at the edge passes him by and they tumble together wickedly.</p><p>Even so, it never passes his lips, damn him. </p><p>UrSu’s eyes are always open and watching from his pillow of soft grasses and autumn flowers. The scent of them he braids into his hair, the swishing of his tail against the foliage is the rustling of many winged beasts bedding down and he knits it into the song he sings to himself when sleep is sand on the wind. His hands, where they lay on urVa’s body, lie gently. Damn him, urVa thinks again, and dips his head to unspool him with hot tongue’s tip tracing the rush of blood from throat to rib. He keeps a hand spare from where he clasps the rest of him with purpose (fingers bending around two ankles held as aloft as their ageing bodies will allow, a third’s fingers between another third’s fingers) to slip down between where their hips are moving, to slide further into wetness, into heat, into pulling a sound from urSu that will ring in his ears and loop itself around the standing stones for unum to come. </p><p>He can never stay long, passing through eternally with morsels of the world beyond and, though he admits it rarely, the yearning for those long expressions and longer embraces from his kin. </p><p>He’d never say it was for <i>this</i>, just as urSu will never name him, in song or otherwise.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Very sorry that the upload schedule for these has gone slightly awry (I’m only... 5 days late!) Currently focusing more on a couple of longer pieces so these may be a tad more sporadic upload-wise though definitely not abandoned!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0031"><h2>31. Out of Breath (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He's gloating, skekGra thinks, catching urGoh's gaze at the top of the path. He knew he'd be there, waiting for his return. To help, he says, taking the packages from him in his many hands and placing them to the side to be sorted later. SkekGra can see the glint in his eye; just knows urGoh is going over <i>every</i> impatient remark skekGra has ever made upon his ponderous return from a supply run. There are any number of snide retorts he could come up with to whatever urGoh has just opened his mouth to say, if he could just... <i>breathe</i>.</p>
<p>UrGoh takes his hands and takes pity on him, leaning up to bump their noses together.</p>
<p>'Next... time, ' he says, drawing it out deliberately, 'take it... slow.'</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Look at me updating on schedule XD</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0032"><h2>32. Bump in the Night (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He hears it in his dreams sometimes, dark dreams that carry him from home and back through the trine. The banging, the infernal clang of the hammer against iron against bone. He was split once, and it split him again, and each time he hears the thump against his skull anew it wrings him out; he awakens tangled in the sheets as he was one tangled in chains and trapping arms, to hear a thud of another kind, a real one, one that echoes against his forehead with a dull wash of pain and makes his heart pause.</p>
<p>But the hands that reach for him do not hold him down. They only seek him in the dark, find and touch him softly. UrGoh, only urGoh, third hard rubbing his head where he has lifted it too high against some low beam or corner in the night. He'll find it funny, later, that someone with so crouched a stance could ever knock sense into himself on a rafter, but now he just shuffles closer, keeping his fear swaddled in that embrace and slipping back into slumber.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I forgot what the prompt for this one was so had to make up a title XD</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0033"><h2>33. Something Wicked (skekGra, urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: blood, mild implied torture.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It might be decency, but skeksis aren't decent. Thoughtlessness then, skekGra assumes; keeping them together before whatever happens next. </p>
<p>Oblivion seems too far. No, he thinks looking at urGoh, it will be something very bad, but they won't die. Not at first.</p>
<p>UrGoh peers back at him through hair matted with blood. SkekGra feels too the hot trickle over his eyes from the blow. It subdued him only because seeing, feeling anything worse happen to urGoh was punishment enough in itself. UrGoh, whose hand reaches as far toward his as it can and stops just out of reach, restricted by the chain and the shackle biting into his wrist, deserves mercy.</p>
<p>SkekGra doesn't remember who struck him, doesn't dwell on who will enact their sanction. He thrusts all thoughts from his mind save those of the being before him. Perhaps they will be cast further asunder, imprisoned alone and separately in cages on opposite ends of the world. Keys thrown into the great ocean, names torn from books and forbidden to recall.</p>
<p>The slap of approaching footsteps echoes along the corridor, but neither pay them heed. </p>
<p>It seems similar thoughts rattle in urGoh's head, for his outstretched hand is shaking.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0034"><h2>34. Borrowed Time (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Changing things up a little with... sonnets! I just think they're neat alright XD</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The seconds flit away like calling birds<br/>The days erode like crumbling sea-hewn shores<br/>And now the suns divide the sky in thirds<br/>Their apogees diminishing once more</p>
<p>The castle in the distance glints and waits<br/>In the horizon set there like a jewel<br/>Within its walls, bright facets of their fates<br/>With purple light pulsate a pledged renewal</p>
<p>The journey long has been and filled with plight<br/>Their bodies weary, burdened with their fear<br/>Each step they take together nears the fight<br/>They onward trudge with their beloved near</p>
<p>And should the suns asunder split them new <br/>At least their trine together were not few</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0035"><h2>35. Stargazing (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Like strands of hair, the Mystic said, we two<br/>are twined around each other like a knot<br/>so tightly wound no being can undo.<br/>To walk the trine with me, it is your lot</p>
<p>But how was I supposed to know in time<br/>The thudding drum I march to would change beat.<br/>My heart, the skeksis says, now thumps in rhyme<br/>with yours, he whispers sheepishly, discreet.</p>
<p>No need to blush, comes the reply in turn. <br/>Long fingers curl around a wrist with care.<br/>It’s not my way, skekGra admits, to burn<br/>with tender thoughts, to lay my feelings bare</p>
<p>But all bright constellations in the sky <br/>Compare not to the one named You and I</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Are these cringe? I don't know and I don't care hahaha &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0036"><h2>36. Overlook (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Before my path you crossed, I was alone<br/>A single shining blade upon the field<br/>My march through life sufficient on my own<br/>My heart was not a gift that I would yield</p>
<p>From sea to sand my name stoked terror true<br/>Fell deeds my name renowned for it became<br/>Death filled me up, content to End, I knew<br/>No kindly word, no gentleness, just fame</p>
<p>Antithesis to me you were, a pest<br/>I loathed your patient ways and measured speech<br/>Accepting love for self: my greatest test<br/>The onward lesson you unending teach</p>
<p>You were beside me walking all along<br/>The harmony of We; our sacred song</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Shakespeare eat your heart out XD</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0037"><h2>37. Hands (skekGra/urGoh)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>SkekGra toys with a pet theory that urGoh can’t know what all of his hands are up to all of the time. </p>
<p>It seems, for so sharp and yet slow a mind to land on any particular thought, that the soft gestures of the hind-hands are nothing more than a reflex, drawing circles in the air prompted by habit only, the origin of which is long-since lost in the whirling smoke of the trine that have passed them by. When he untangles his hair, neck curving to one side and left hands occupied with comb and braid, the right ones drift, fingers twisting in the sand, or lifting to greet skekGra if he should stumble upon urGoh after his bath, which happens more often than not as they trip over one another in their limited living space.</p>
<p>It’s strange, sometimes sweet, mostly silly, skekGra thinks, and is partly glad he only has two to worry about gesticulating with appropriately. UrGoh’s hands are, for the most part, a distraction. In their darker moments on the edge of argument he wishes urGoh would just cease their movement, stop, for once, his innate urRu-ness for a heartbeat, and cease sketching songs in the sky even as they bicker.</p>
<p>But it’s in the moments so devoid of light that skekGra cannot even call them dark, cannot call them anything at all, in the tiny hours of the night when all hope leaves him that he forgets the perplexity and pointlessness of urGoh’s gestures. Instead he allows those hands to join in single purpose and hold him until the shaking ceases and the dawn warms the stone. It’s then that he envies urGoh them, for the ease with which he comforts with them, for how simply he makes a home for him within their grasp.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Apologies for the more sporadic uploads on this - I’ve had a few other projects I’ve been focusing on!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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